About us
We take care of 6 hectares of landscape covered with grapevines. We produce low-intervention wine from organic grapes. We are based in Mutěnice, Moravia.
The name “Dlúhé Grefty” means something like “long rows” (of vines). The word “greft” comes from the local dialect and has a clear origin in German, meaning to graft new vines (this relates to the former method of vine propagation — you simply stuck a living piece of wood from an existing vine into the ground and waited for it to grow; no American rootstocks like today). Until the end of the 19th century, before the phylloxera catastrophe broke out here, all rows of vines in the area were called “grefty.” Today, it is part of history, and we named our winery after this word because we love tradition (and also because we have a long path between all of our vineyard plots).
Our style
In general we have a technologically poor wine production process. We crush hand-harvested grapes and leave them on skins for a few days (depending on variety and year). Then we press them and put the juice into 600 l oak barrels, where it ferments and matures for at least a year on fine lees.
We neither filter nor fine the wine and add nothing – just a little sulphur before bottling.
Our vineyards, soil and varieties
Currently (2024) there are 17 places where we grow vines. All the vineyards in our village are very fragmented and a lot of them lie on steep hills. Our smallest plot is 8 ares (approx. 0.2 acres) and the largest one is 1.2 hectares (approx. 3 acres). The average size of our plots is 25 ares (approx. 0.6 acres).
Topsoil is usually black or brown, subsoil changes from loess to clay or sand (no stones in 98.5 % of our soil). So the wines are fresh, light and fruity without much minerality.
Regarding varieties, we focus on Neuburger, Pinot Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Noir. All our vineyards are certified organic (no systemic spraying or herbicides).
Our story
I bought my very first vineyard in 2008 just to have some exercise, because I do not like sports (so I started from zero – there is no winemaking tradition in our family). In 2011 my wife and I started building a wine cellar, and in 2013 I tried to make my first own wine. I also started organic farming.
The first vintage we sold was 2015. It was a hot year with heavy rain just before harvest and then a warm and sunny autumn. Since then we keep adding to our land, because we believe in the specific local conditions and want to concentrate them into our wines.